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Escopeta
Trad climber
Idaho
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Jun 24, 2016 - 07:14am PT
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Current conditions for MALIBU 1ft overhead
So, waist high knee slappers for me then......lol
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Contractor
Boulder climber
CA
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Jun 24, 2016 - 07:17am PT
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Mrs. Contractor
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Contractor
Boulder climber
CA
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Jun 24, 2016 - 07:21am PT
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Re: Malibu
Waist high mob battle with retro fish's and ridiculous beaver tail tops- Self conscious fashion surfing to the extreme.
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skcreidc
Social climber
SD, CA
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Jun 24, 2016 - 07:55am PT
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The retro fish is the new "longboard". Beaver tails? Good G-d, I hated those bitd. Why would anyone wear them now?
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drljefe
climber
El Presidio San Augustin del Tucson
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Jun 24, 2016 - 08:55am PT
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Surfboards I Have Loved: vol 2
THE MIDGET
After surfing every day for a few years I had kind of figured out where I wanted my surfing to go and what I wanted out of a surfboard as I continued to progress.
I'd been riding a 70's single fin shortboard as my daily driver for a while. It was super buoyant- it paddled well and went fast. But as I got better and wanted to explore different lines on a wave, the Hawaiian Spirit had its limitations. It was time for my first custom board.
San Clemente was a center for surf industry. The major surf magazines, surf brands, and countless board shapers were located in the "Surf Ghetto", so there were many choices for my first custom.
I knew one shaper personally, from the beach and the lineup, Midget Smith. He was a classic older guy, an ex pro and contest judge that frothed like a grommet and shredded on a shortboard. We set up an appointment.
The smell and scene of the shaper's bay and glass shop was exciting, if not a bit unhealthy. Pungent fumes from polyester resin dominated, and foam dust everywhere. A craftsman zone. Men with respirators, surfers, and surfboards. Surfboards everywhere, in every size, shape, color, and in every stage of creation- from raw foam blank to shiny and colorful. Looking at order slips on any given board might reveal the name of a famous pro surfer. This was ground zero.
I brought the single fin with me. The general dimensions and volume seemed to work well for me, and Midget agreed- we could take the basic genes of the board and tweak them, modernize them.
Midget was stoked on the Hawaiian Spirit and was the one who let me know the deep channels on the rails weren't channels, they were "Jets", man. I told him I'd grown attached to the color scheme as well, so that was added to the tab. There was also a variety of logos, and I chose the most retro one, a seagull inside a sun. 6+8oz glass and a sanded gloss finish would complete the old/new vibe and functionality of the board.
I waited a few weeks before getting the call to come to the glass shop and pick it up, and boy was I stoked. The board felt right under my arm and the color design had been faithfully recreated. And the price? $230, cheaper than any board on the rack at one of the local shops.
I don't remember my first wave on the Midget, but it was most likely an average day at Middles, my regular spot, and the more mushy, but far less crowded wave next to Lowers. An average day at Middles was still way better than most places. I do remember that the board worked right out of the box. It paddled great, was fast and responsive, and with three fins, allowed my lines and turns to be a bit more aggressive. This board was a great teacher and stepping stone into a new style of surfing and it was my main board for a few years.
I'd see Midget in the water at Church and once he told me he'd since made that same board a number of times and the shape was popular. "It's the "El Jefe" model, Jefe!"
Years later, after moving on to another board, I sold the Midget to survive a period of severe pain and no work. I got $275 for it, 50 bucks more than I'd paid new. The good glass job and pretty colors had paid off.
A few years after that, I got a cellphone photo from my friend Todd Lewis in Morro Bay. It was a photo of the Midget. A girl had bought it in San Diego and loved, loved, loved it. The Midget had gotten around.
A few years after THAT, Midget lost his battle to some rare cancer.
Rest in Peace Midget, you made a great board that made a lot of people happy.
Midget Smith Surfboards
San Clemente
6'3 x 21" x 2 1/2"
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drljefe
climber
El Presidio San Augustin del Tucson
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Jun 24, 2016 - 01:38pm PT
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Chris-
It's too bad the Fish got so trendy, but also, understandable.
The Beaver Tail, no. No function other than lame retro "fashion".
Contractor-
I surfed Malibu once at night with glow sticks and it was still crowded!
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skcreidc
Social climber
SD, CA
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Jun 24, 2016 - 02:25pm PT
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Another good story Jefe! Just to clarify things, I have no problems with the fisheys or longboards. Matter of fact, I learned to surf on a longboard. Imaging surfing State Park on a single fin 9'6" with a square tail and no edge anywhere. I did a lot of pole vaulting. People stayed away from me with good reason.
I surfed Malibu once at night with glow sticks and it was still crowded!
Friggen LOL! Late 90's to early 2000's? Shoot, I may have been out there with you. More fun than surfing it in the daytime by a long shot and some times were rather uncrowded.
Just for the heck of it, here's a fish for you ... 21" wide 5'10"
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drljefe
climber
El Presidio San Augustin del Tucson
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Jun 24, 2016 - 06:03pm PT
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I like the outline.
That tail is different...
Full Wu Tail!!!
And Chris, between you and me, my next installment of
"Over-Romanticizing My Old Boards"
is about a keel Fish :-)
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overwatch
climber
Arizona
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Jun 27, 2016 - 11:44pm PT
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that wave is chaos
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dikhed
climber
State of fugue and disbelief
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Jun 28, 2016 - 08:22am PT
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lucky it wasn't big
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skcreidc
Social climber
SD, CA
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Jun 28, 2016 - 10:03am PT
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I, sheesh.....that was pretty damn stupid. Slow motion train wreck for sure. "i've got an idea. Let's drive the jet ski into the toilet bowel right next to the jetty and see what happens." Those dudes better make a large donation to those lifeguards.
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crøtch
climber
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Jun 28, 2016 - 11:08am PT
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Heroic work by the guards. Hard to tell how close they were to the rocks from the camera angle but it looks like they put themselves in significant jeopardy to save those two.
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drljefe
climber
El Presidio San Augustin del Tucson
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Jun 29, 2016 - 09:58pm PT
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Surfboards I Have Loved: vol 3
THE EXTERMINATOR
"No one rides a twin fin in Hawaii!"
It's just one of the many memorable lines from the horrible/awesome 80's movie North Shore, in which our hero Rick Kane wins a wave pool contest in Arizona and uses the prize money to go to Hawaii to "ride the big waves in the North Shore!"
From the moment I started surfing on the Central Coast, to Costa Rica, to my new home in San Clemente, I could never live down my connection to Rick Kane. "Scrub it Kook", "Go back to Arizona haole", every classic quotable line, I heard them all.
So when I was packing my boardbag with twinnies for my first trip to Hawaii, of course I found myself repeating those lines and hoping I didn't run into the same heavy locals and ridicule Rick did.
But I was going to the South Shore, Town, Waikiki- on a cheap package deal in the off season and figured my small/mushy wave boards would work just fine in the longboard waves around Diamond Head.
I grew up listening to stories of old Hawaii from my grandmother. She lived there in the 30's and was enchanted by the old elegant hotels on the beach at Waikiki.
So when my first toe got wet in the warm South Pacific water, and I paddled out far enough to catch my first view of the iconic pink Royal Hawaiian Hotel, I was flooded with memories and emotion. But there was business to take care of- the waves were good!
While I was making the long paddle out to the peak at Queens, a local kid with long hair, maybe 10 or 11 years old, was riding a wave in. As the wave neared, I sat up on my board and watched him, just soaking it all in.
He glared at me with his best stink eye, and thinking I was going to turn around and burn him on the wave, yells "Ohhhh HELL no haole!"
Great. Here we go.
Once on the peak everything was groovy and I had a great surf. Turquoise water with Diamond Head in the background, with a fun and rippable wave? Oh yeah. A lot of people would have saved the hassle of traveling with boards just to surf the south shore, and instead rented a board. But what made my first surf in Hawaii a real gas- I was riding my favorite board, a magic board, my daily driver, the Exterminator, a twin fin. In Hawaii.
My evolution as a surfer had taken me through a number of boards, all good teachers. The thing they had in common was volume- width and thickness, and outline. Basically, they were not standard shortboards. The waves I surfed regularly back home in San Clemente were generally slower, mushier point breaks and wider, flatter boards worked well in these waves, and allowed me to surf a range of conditions without resorting to a longboard or struggling on a standard shortboard.
My first short board was a 70's single fin, then a thruster modeled after it, the Midget. It taught me how to generate my own speed, to push hard in turns, and to go more vertical up the wave face. I could ride it in big or small surf and it became my one and only.
Half my friends were diehard shortboarders and the other were longboarders. They didn't hang too much. My best frienemy, Elvis, was a longboarder, more specifically, a logger. Real, old fashioned heavy single fin 10 footers were his thing. He had developed a relationship with a South Bay shaper named Tyler, who was making the nicest craftsman logs around.
One day Elvis came back with a little white board along with his new log. He said it was a loaner, a prototype, that Tyler wanted him to test drive. It was short and squat with a very wide swallowtail. It was really flat and had two keel fins. On the deck was a large hand painted cartoon of the Western Exterminator mascot. Well Elvis was 6'5 and a 10'6 longboarder used to one fin. He was an excellent surfer but this board was 5'11 and had two fins, and didn't go very well for him, so I was the obvious successor.
Just looking at it I knew it would work for me and as soon as I stood up on it, I knew it was magic. Twin fins don't work for everyone, but they worked for me, as I soon found.
Where the Midget picked up where the Hawaiian Spirit left off, this board absolutely blasted off where the Midget left off. I could catch waves earlier, go faster, turn sharper, or longer. Backside it was a dream, gripping high on the wall and carrying all my speed through cutbacks. Bigger waves, smaller, steeper, slower, it didn't matter, this board worked for me. It did everything I wanted it to do without even thinking about it, like I didn't even have a board at all. Every surfer finds a "magic board" at some point, the Exterminator was mine. This board replaced the Midget and made it obsolete. It became my everyday board.
Not many people were riding Fishes at that time, and the board and I, well we got some weird looks in and out of the water. This was an era when groups of Asian surfers would travel to Trestles for some "cultural immersion". This was also an era when my hair was sun bleached white and I rode a beach cruiser so rusted that the spokes had grown together. As I rode by, with my fish bungeed in the outrigger style board rack, these groups of Asians would stop in their tracks, analyzing everything about me. It was kind of weird, but kind of cool, I guess. I must have represented something cool and different to them, or maybe archetypal, classic.The board was part of the package. Caucasians tripped on me too, assuming it was a kneeboard, a near extinct form of surfing practiced only by a small, esoteric group.
I had grown very attached to this fish but there were times when Elvis would just repossess it, and I'd be forced to ride something else. like I sad we were frienemies. When he almost died in a motorcycle accident and was bedridden for an extended period, the board became mine, for good, with a handshake and everything.
During the years that I rode the Exterminator, fishes became very popular. A trend, a fad that had been dissed and dismissed just a few years earlier by the same shapers that were now making them by the hundreds and the surfers that realized they must work if kooks like Jefe can rip on them.
The fish then became the new longboard. They flooded the lineups and became the new focus of hate by grumpy shortboarders. There was now a huge retro niche, and the average fish looked far different than mine, with all the bells and whistles and the price tag to match. The riders too- wearing period-era wetsuits...it had gotten a little out of hand. But it was good to see that minds had opened concerning surfboard design, choosing equipment that suited the conditions, not just emulating what the pros rode. I know I sure benefitted from this sea change, and maybe, in a small way, contributed to it.
Rick Kane's trials and tribulations ran from being beat up by locals, learning about the ocean and board design from a mentor, scoring a hot local girl, to eventually being accepted and becoming a ripping surfer. The final scene has Rick looking over to the feared and respected leader of the local Hawaiian surf gang, only to be thrown a Shaka and a knowing smirk. The kook that rode the twin fin had come a long way.
I literally rode the Exterminator into the dirt. Badly delaminated and disfigured, it has permanently retired in Arizona.
I will never discard it, there's still some magic left in the board, it's in the memories.
Tyler Surfboards
"Deuce" prototype
5'11" x 21" x 2 1/2"
If you'll notice, the rodent on the board is wielding an artist brush and palette, not a knife and fork like the original logo.
The pin striper for Tyler Surfboards did the art and said it reflected his relationship with his boss!
A note on the origin of the Western Exterminator logo:
The Little Man is Born
You’ve probably whizzed by his 17-foot image dozens of times or been stuck in traffic behind one of the many trucks that he rides on. The Little Man with the Hammer, the trademark of The Western Exterminator Company was born in 1931.
The small guy with big eyes and a tall top hat was an instant success. He was a commanding little person, with one warning finger raised against a rodent, and a large mallet tucked under his arm.
The creation of telephone company artist Vaughn Kaufman, “The Little Man” has been used as the trademark for this family-run company, celebrating its 95th year, ever since. The Los Angeles icon was originally named “Kernel Kleenup” but it never really stuck. Even after a television contest to rename him in 1964, he remained known as the Little Man.
In 1984, Van Halen used his image to promote their world tour, prompting rock fans to call the exterminator company wondering why they were using the bands image to promote pest control!
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clinker
Trad climber
Santa Cruz, California
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Jun 30, 2016 - 02:26am PT
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The access issue.
By Amy Larson
BIO
Santa Cruz Sheriff urges Coastal Commission to keep Privates Beach private
UPDATED 3:28 PM PDT Jun 29, 2016
CAPITOLA, Calif. —We don't want Privates Beach to become the next Sunny Cove Beach
Privates Beach
The California Coastal Commission said the beach's gated entrance is exclusionary and violates the Coastal Act, which mandates public access.
MORE
That's the message Santa Cruz County Sheriff Jim Hart sent to the California Coastal Commission in a letter this month after the commission ordered the county's only private beach to become public.
Opal Cliffs Park, called Privates Beach by locals, is nestled in a beautiful cove below a high-end neighborhood in Capitola. It is a popular spot for longboard surfers, families who live nearby, and nudists.
READ: Sheriff Hart's letter to the Coastal Commission
A 9-foot high, locked metal fence separates surfers and sun worshipers from Privates Beach. Residents who pay an annual $100 fee to the Opal Cliffs Recreation District receive keys to enter the beach.
The commission has ordered the Opal Cliffs Recreation District to remove the gate, fence, and guard by June 30 or face a daily $11,000 fine.
Opal Cliffs residents reacted by posted a large red sign at the gate reading, "Emergency Alert. The California Coastal Commission is seeking to destroy Opal Cliffs Park."
In a letter dated June 17, Sheriff Hart urged the commission to reverse its decision. Opening access would cause the beach's crime rate to spike, and "create an immediate and continuing dangerous nuisance," he said.
Unlike Pleasure Point and other beaches along East Cliff Drive, the secluded Privates Beach is difficult for deputies to patrol, because it lacks "good sight lines for effective observation," Hart said.
"It is more akin to Sunny Cove Beach, which has become a high crime area. In the last 12 months, my office managed 605 calls for service at Sunny Cove Beach for a wide variety of criminal activity. The crime occurring in the Sunny Cove Beach area is causing serious problems for homeowners," Hart said.
In that same time period, Privates Beach only had nine emergency calls.
Hart added, "I have lived in this community my entire life. I cannot recall there ever not having been a fence and gate at (Privates Beach)."
Patrick Veesart, enforcement supervisor with the Coastal Commission, said concerns outlined by the sheriff are the same concerns every beach town up and down California's coast faces.
Opal Cliffs should not be given special treatment, Veesart said.
"The solution is not to wall off the coast from the public," Veesart said. "This is a popular surf spot. This is an important beach. And it's time to get this open to the public."
The California Coastal Act requires maximum beach access for the public.
As of Wednesday, a deadline extension had not yet been granted to the district.
Opal Cliffs Recreation District attorney Mark Massara said nudists and families both love the beach for the same reasons: "It's safe, clean, and well-cared for."
The key fee made the beach's pristine condition possible, and Santa Cruz County does not have enough resources to ensure it will stay that way, the attorney said.
"The sheriff raises some really valid concerns," Massara said.
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Rick A
climber
Boulder, Colorado
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Jun 30, 2016 - 09:18am PT
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Really liked all three of those evocative episodes, Jefe! Old boards, like old climbing gear, can trigger a tide of memory.
…allowed me to surf a range of conditions without resorting to a longboard
The idea of a longboard as “ last resort” reminded me of a line in Barbarian Days where Finnegan considers, as he gets older, switching to a longboard. But he rejects the notion, saying it would be akin to admitting you need a walker in order to walk.
As one who came to surfing late in life-via a longboard-that stung when I read it!
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overwatch
climber
Arizona
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Jun 30, 2016 - 09:24am PT
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Opal Cliffs Recreation District attorney Mark Massara said nudists and families both love the beach for the same reasons: "It's safe, clean, and well-cared for."
Unfortunately most nudists are the last people you want to see nude
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drljefe
climber
El Presidio San Augustin del Tucson
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Jun 30, 2016 - 01:30pm PT
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Hey Rick!
Thanks for reading!
You know, that day you and I went for a surf, a longboard was absolutely the right board for the day. I was bummed I didn't have one with me. I love longboards and riding them in certain conditions.
In fact....
The very last episode of
"Wall of Text About Foam and Fiberglass" is about my longboard.
I know you're all on the edge of your seats! Lol!
Rick- Let's hook up again. I seem to score every time I make it to the coast, so I'll let you know next time :-)
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